Escape from Base 6 4
by Mild Guy
Summary: In the year 20XX, Base 6-4 falls to the forces of SubSpace. Popo, Bowser, Lucario, Kirby, and Olimar have one chance. And that chance is to fight back! Too bad they don't stand a Freezie's chance in Norfair. A military AU in 3 parts.
1. Heathen

Warning/Contains: Violence, gore, and some light, unethical sexual content. For more on my warnings policy please visit my user profile. Do not take this story home to meet your parents. Manufactured in close proximity to a nut.

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank my beta readers grammaguy and Venomous Woe for all their hard work and valuable input on this story.

* * *

we see it too late:

after the cock gets swallowed

the heart follows

-_a killer_, Charles Bukowski

* * *

_**Returning Favors**_

**Chapter One/Three: Heathen**

(*_*)**  
**

The black horde of Game & Watches swarmed from the cover of the surrounding jungle in such numbers the electronic clicking of their seamless bodies flooded out every other sound. Mines and death traps killed only a few frontrunners. The uncountable ranks skittered onwards, oblivious to the fractured corpses of their fallen comrades trampled underfoot.

They charged the steep slope of Base 6-4's outer perimeter in a solid undulating wave, just as Lucario had foreseen in his death dreams. The sight of it. _Goddess_. He was too terrified to close his eyes. The Gray Master – the Great Game Over as some named him in midnight prayer – locked his icy claws around Lucario's throat.

The sharp crack of Ivysaur's fifty cal. from the sniper's perch overhead snapped Lucario back into waking reality. Through all his life he had never hesitated in the face of approaching violence. Now, he warmed with shame that sapient thought had slipped away so quickly, rendering him into nothing but a frightened animal, wide-eyed and transfixed within the burning glare of doom's own headlights barreling down upon them. Lucario bared his fangs at the horde and pulled back the heavy machine gun's slide lever, careful this time that his fur did not catch between the moving parts. He confirmed the ammo belt had loaded correctly.

Ivy's rifle fired again and again. The vile ear-drilling clicking of G&W movements crawled into his ears and gnawed on his depleted store of sanity like fire ants attacking a sugar cube. Sensitive as his ears were, it came as a relief to pull the trigger and bury the noise beneath a machinegun's roar. The gun was bolted into the cement, no need to worry about recoil. Only a belt jam or overheating could stop him now. Here in hell loudest was strongest, and with this machine gun he was the mightiest badass around.

"Suck it down!" he screamed telepathically at their calm oil slick minds. The mindscapes did not so much as ripple in response.

G&Ws died in double-digit numbers by the second. Their bodies splintered under the withering gun fire, little pieces jumping off their shattered frames like black fleas. Some yards away Squirtle was doing the same, sweeping their lines behind his own stationary machinegun.

Even so, the horde's vanguard bulldozed through the razor wire fence that marked the halfway point up the slope. The cold hand of the Gray Master squeezed tighter around Lucario's windpipe. _Goddamn, how could there be so many?_

In the corner of his vision a hunched figure hustled by. Lucario snapped his head around. It was only Private Popo, the Ice Climber, racing to his post. He wore his jungle-camo parka, M16 in mitt. "Hey," Lucario shouted telepathically. "Go get the Captain!"

Popo staggered to a halt, eyes white with horror. "But —"

"Don't give me no shit, soldier. The Captain is the only one who can save our asses now. Go! Go! Go!"

After a few irreplaceable seconds of fidgeting indecision, Popo sped off towards the central bunker. Lucario looked back to the slope. Some of his platoon mates: Psyduck, Charizard, and the other Pokemon had taken their positions behind the sandbags and cement battlements. They opened fire with their assault rifles and whatever bio-electro-chemical projectiles nature had gifted them. Lucario counted less than thirty rifles sparking muzzle flashes. _We are too few. The Gray Master has already claimed our best_.

The platoon blasted the surging enemy lines with a continuous stream of bullets, rockin' and rollin', forgoing the short controlled bursts of fire required during basic training. In their panic they threw their ammunition away. Lucario couldn't blame them. This is what Pokemon were bred for. Attack with everything. Hold nothing back.

For a minute, their combined firepower pushed the surging tide of enemies back over the razor wire. JigglyPuff waddled up to the sandbag pile to his left, spat out her cigarette, and squinted down at the Game & Watches. She took a second to adjust her bandanna, then hoisted her grenade launcher up and lobbed a volley of explosive rounds up over the slope. The grenades arced down into the enemy ranks and exploded shrapnel or flaming jelly amidst the massed bodies, punching holes in the jostling sea of bodies. Holes that flowed shut as soon as they opened. Lucario wished Game & Watches screamed because they'd surely be making some sweet music now.

The machine gun's belt ran out. Heat crinkled the air above his machinegun. Lucario poured a mosquito larva-ridden bucket of water over the barrels and tried not to trip on the spent bullet casings as he hurried to load another belt.

This wasn't how he'd pictured combat when he first signed up for a tour in Her Majesty's Imperial Army. Battle was supposed to be thing of honor, of skill. Bitterly he recalled the fantasies, of one-on-one duels with Tabuu's elite janissaries, fighting with no weapons but their bodies. Yet here he was, stinking of fear and probably worse things, about to die a million miles away from anywhere in a nameless jungle for a cause whose creed he could not longer recall. Some honor. The under-handed, the stupid, and the skillful died alike.

Locked and loaded, he stared down the barrel sights and found the battlefield changed. Primid marched from the jungle, and unlike the G&Ws, they carried weapons. Lights like camera flashes glittered among the swaying branches and shadowed spaces between the trees. The enemy had learned to properly return fire. Standard ballistics pinged against the cement fortifications, bursts of gray dust and cement flakes erupting from starfish craters.

But that was nothing compared to the lasers. One instant a Pokemon might sniff the scent of something burning, swinging its head back and forth to find the source of the smoke tendrils coiling up around it. The next… fur, scale, and clothing alike burst into flame as flesh sloughed from bone and organs exploded into steam.

Such was the fate of Psyduck. The others picked the mess from their eyes and nose, and hugged the pavement. Lucario hunched further down behind the machinegun's bulk.

A few of the Primid followed Jigglypuff's example, lobbing explosive ordinance up over the battlements. Sandbags disintegrated as grenades detonated. A well aimed round cored out a pillbox and turned its insides into an abattoir.

Fewer guns returned fire than before. Too few guns to drown out the wailing of dying Pokemon. Tabuu's grim harvest reaped its first crop of the day from a field already ravaged nearly bare.

A bullet split the air close enough to make Lucario duck again. He heard the loud pop and hiss of pressurized air decompressing over the din of war, and turned his head in time to see Jigglypuff deflate into a sad puddle of rumpled pink skin.

He unleashed a wordless scream into the hazy morning, not with his mind but with his throat. The machinegun vomited hot death, but only for a moment. A hard metallic thud told Lucario that the belt feed had jammed.

No time left for repairs. Below, the G&Ws massed for a charge. And this time they would breach the walls. He didn't need a college education to see it coming.

The Gray Master's frozen fingers spidered into Lucario's mouth and slipped down his throat, clenching into an icy fist as they pushed their way inside until there was only jagged cold beneath his bones. He swallowed and accepted the gift, grateful. The old ways remained dead to him. No more would the calm power flow from a core of quiet harmony. No more yoga and no more kata. No more would he balance poised on a mountain peak, one with the lofty stone. The cherished myth of the warrior's honorable death was just that – myth. This war, with its hundred thousand pointless last moments writhed out amid the damp moss and reddened mud, had carved away the sacred mystery of death by slivers until only cheapened reality remained.

No, the zombie numbness Lucario felt then as he picked up Jiggly's grenade launcher made a fine replacement for all that. At least Tabuu could not take this from him.

Below, the Game & Watches finished mustering and swept aside the pitiful remains of the razor wire fence under the rolling crush of their advance.

* * *

Popo found Yoshi slumped against the sandbag wall outside the foxhole. He shook the green dinosaur, and receiving no response, slapped its chubby face. "Wake up, man! The base is under attack. It's bad, real bad. C'mon, man, get up!"

Yoshi mumbled and lolled onto his side. It was no use, the syrup had a hold of him now. Yoshi's glassy, unseeing eyes meant the dino would remain like this for another hour at best. Popo peered down into the foxhole, the underground storage room Wario had converted into a syrup den. The dim forms of a dozen more soldiers slouched among the shadows, lost in a syrup-fueled daze.

A cold shadow fell across the back of Popo's neck. The warning stench of garlic came too late. Wario grabbed him by the parka collar and threw him hard into the wall.

"Glad your faggot ass showed up. You gonna pay back what your egg layer owes me?" Wario's breath bathed Popo's face with the wet stink of garlic and tooth rot and worse things. The stench made it easier to ignore the searing pain of the fat man's knee jabbed into his belly.

Popo's blood might've boiled if terror hadn't already chilled it down to ice water. "I'll tell the Captain," he squeaked. Wario drew nose-to-nose and the Ice Climber regretted his hollow threat.

Something hard and rusty pressed against Popo's windpipe. A shameful, itchy wetness trickled down his thighs. Wario laughed; the ugly sound fell on Popo's ears like a club. The fat heap of a belly jiggled free through the breach between shirt and pants.

Then Wario stopped laughing and smashed his face in closer. Popo gazed into the sunken pits of bruised skin that were Wario's eye sockets; he sank into the burning, veined whites and swallowing pupils and knew the wheezing wreck of the fat drug pusher's mind had at last spun off a cliff. One too many hits of crystallized fire flower. Or maybe this reeking tropical hell had at last finished its horrible work on one of its most faithful servants, as it eventually did for them all.

Popo's unique nervous system did not feel the jungle's swelter any more than the sub-zero winds of his beloved arctic homeland. Only the blood coursing through his veins seemed to change temperature. He had watched at a remove as the heat and pestilence drove everyone else insane. _Is this how the jungle will finally take me? By proxy?_

The distant clangor of battle crept closer. The perimeter defense line was taking a real beating. _Someone has to talk sense here._ Everyone else nearby lay in a puddle of their own drool, so that someone looked to be him. "This is pointless, man," Popo croaked. "There's a battle going on."

"There's always another battle. Going down here. Going down in the jungle. Don't try changing the subject – my profits."

"But they've got us surrounded! We're all gonna –"

Wario pressed the flat of the knife harder against Popo's adam's apple. The edge nicked him and a tiny spot of liquid warmth pooled there. "One or both of you pays me what I'm owed, or I'll carve it from ya, piece by piece. I'll grind up your spines and sell 'em as aphrodisiac."

One meaty hand throttled Popo's neck and shook his head until his ears rang. "Make no mistake. I never liked you, you yellow snow eating pansy. I'll make you scream in thirty-one different ways. The difference is a few minutes or a whole day of it, depending on if I get what's owed in full. I'll start on those ears of yours since you always have a hard time hearing what I say. Twist the tip of old Rusty here in through the canal, work through the drum. Fish out all those little bones and soft parts I can't remember the names for."

Wario tossed Popo's shuddering body away. "Now get outta here. You disgust me."

Popo desperately wanted to take Yoshi with him. But Wario didn't budge. He stood guard, cleaning his fingernails with the knife. Deep under the syrup, the dino wouldn't be easy to move. Popo swore silently that he would return for his friend and rushed as fast as his suddenly rubbery legs could take him to the central command bunker.

The time shortage forced a shortcut past the overflowing latrines and their unspeakable stench. As the drone of a million fly wings grew louder, he squeezed his eyes shut, suddenly unable to bear the sight of the black insect clouds. But it was the sound that could drive a man insane if he listened to it long enough. Countless bugs, crawling over the outdoor toilets, shivering in undulating black lumps. The same way the G&Ws and Primid would soon crawl over all their corpses.

For an insane instant Popo wished Wario had pierced his ear drums, if only to spare him this pestilence symphony and the aural reminder of final battle looming ever louder from the background.

His foot splashed into a puddle of foul smelling liquid. Eyes still clamped tight, he wheezed a curse between clenched teeth, shook his soaked leg, and ran until he couldn't hear the flies over the invasion.

The bunker's guards had left to fight on the perimeter. The entrance stood unlocked. For the thousandth time, Popo took out his picture of Nana standing outside their home and kissed it for luck, then put the picture back in its hiding spot and ripped open the door.

Inside, an old desk fan made _tak tak tak_ noises as it stirred the fetid humidity. A thin cloud of old cigarette smoke still hugged the ceiling. Not many officers of any rank remained. Just the Major, the Captain, and a small handful of non-coms. The officer's desks were empty, save one. Pokemon Master Sergeant Red rocked back and forth in a creaky chair, eyes closed and fingering a rosary as he mouthed prayers. He wore the unique crimson uniform that signified his specialist rank.

Red's eyelids snapped open as Popo snaked between the desks. "By Palutena's holy shining tits, where do you think you're going? Turn your whale blubber ass around this instant, get back to the front line. Slay those goddessdamned abominations!"

"I w-will, sir," Popo said. He was always unable to keep from stammering around the officers. "But first I've got to –"

The wooden rosary met the desktop with a sharp crack. Red shot up out of his seat, face fulfilling his namesake. "You dirty ice licker! You're thinking about deserting, ain't cha'? Cowardice in the line of duty earns you a gutting, Private. Hold on a second." The sergeant yanked open a drawer and rooted around inside for a good gutting tool.

More aggravated over the delay than terrified of Red, Popo found his tongue. "We need the Captain to coordinate the counter attack. Where is he?"

As if in answer a soft moan drifted downstairs from the Captain's 2nd floor office. Red rolled his eyes and sank into the chair with a tired sigh. "The reprobate is in. Where else would he be during our final hour but hiding in his hole? Best go get him before he takes his afternoon nap." The sergeant picked up his rosary.

"Uh, sir… the men could really use your… well, your guidance right now," said Popo.

Red shot him the stink eye. "You'd all like that, wouldn't you?"

"Uh, yes?"

"I've got more praying to do, Private. Praying for a death quick and clean. Praying for the Goddess's loving arms around us all in the world to come. And for Her luminous bosoms against my face. Hallelujah and amen!" He waved Popo off. "Go on and collect your monster. If you hurry, he might have time to give out swimming lessons."

"Swimming... what?"

"The lessons you'll need for paddling through the spilled blood of our comrades." Red pulled a bottle of caramel-colored liquor and a shot glass from the drawer and poured two fingers. Popo licked his lips.

"Maybe I could help you pray, sir."

"The cries of a dirty heathen like you would never reach sweet Palutena's ears." He chuckled, low and mean, then drank.

Popo went upstairs. A low muttering trickled through the half-open door of the Captain's office. Popo peered inside the room and froze in place.

A woman's head, crowned with a dingy blond wig, worked up and down between the Captain's great scaly legs, fake hair swaying to her rhythm. She made exaggerated sucking noises while the Captain muttered the word peach over and over, occasionally hissing encouragement. It was common legend that Captain Bowser Koopa made all his prostitutes wear the same wig, though everyone had a different theory as to why.

Soldiers dealt with long distance separation from loved ones in different ways. Popo held onto the photo of his sister like a good luck charm, Yoshi hit the syrup, and Bowser role-played during sex with local hookers.

Now that he had a second to reflect on it, Popo felt a small measure of regret over not expanding his choice of coping mechanisms.

Bowser leaned back in his chair, eyes closed in studied bliss. The pretend Peach's pistoning was hypnotic. Popo swallowed and sharply rapped his knuckles on the door. One crocodile eye slid open and regarded him coldly.

"In case you can't tell by looking, Private, I'm busy enjoying my last few moments alive," he growled.

"Sir, it's an emergency," Popo whispered. _Why am I whispering?_ "Things have gotten about as bad as they're going to get."

"You don't say." Bowser cradled the hooker's chin in his mammoth hand and tilted her head up, establishing eye contact. He muttered a few words in her language. She freed her mouth and answered back in kind.

"Says she's only been paid enough for me. You want in, you have to pay the same. No group discounts."

Popo licked his lips. "I mean, sir, there's a battle for the walls and we're about to be overrun. They've got us outnumbered by ten-to-one. If you don't do something, we're… we're going to…"

The Captain let out an exasperated sigh. "I swear. Bigger babies than my old koopa troop, the whole freaking platoon of ya. If you really need someone to wipe your own ass for you, then be a good peon and hand me the M60."


	2. Assuming Command

**Chapter Two/Three: Assuming Command**

(-_-)

* * *

The Ice Climber's simpering had broken the fantasy. He accepted the M60 from Popo. _Odd, the old pig feels heavy today. Mmm… better take the grenade launcher as well._

He threw a wad of paper money at Lip – a mere formality for he doubted she'd live to spend them. While she counted the dough, he snatched the wig off her head and shoved it into his utility belt. An unexpected twinge of loss stung him. Lip had played pretend better than the rest. _The Primid might not register her as a threat._ _Sure, and I might be crowned king again._

She looked up at him with questioning eyes. "Get out of here. Hide," he said in her native tongue. Lip continued to sit there. He turned away from her and left the office with Popo in tow. If she wanted to die in this heap it was no longer his concern.

"What are we gonna do?" Popo asked. Bowser didn't need to smell his fear, he could hear it in the Climber's quaking whine. The icicle humper had attitude when he wasn't scared shitless, which almost excused his incompetence. Negative qualities outnumbering the tantalizing positives – such was the way of underlings, and the soldiers stationed at this shit hole were no exception.

Yet, they were his. As their leader, he owed them something, even if it didn't prove worth a plumber's fart in the end.

"What I'm going to do is radio a request for evacuation. A bit late, but maybe someone's nearby or on their way already." Fat chance. But as the old Koopa maxim stated: when the hammer drops, pipe dreams cost little.

The Ice Climber's fear-reek grew ranker. "Major Hand isn't going to like that much."

"You let me handle it. Get back out there and hold off the enemy until help arrives. Green Platoon at the north-east wall probably needs you the most. They're undermanned, after getting their dumb asses ambushed on patrol last week. Wait for me. If I don't show up before the defensive perimeter breaks, fall back to here. Got it?"

Popo's shoulders drooped but he hustled off to fulfill his orders.

So much for brave speeches. Time to bloody some knuckles.

Bowser considered also taking the photo of Peach, along with her letters, hidden beneath his mattress. She had promised to wait for him. He knew better. More likely, she had married Mario. _The sunuvabitch probably invites his brother over every other night so they can double team her._ Peach would like that. She was a freak behind closed doors and that was one of the many reasons he loved her.

Marching down the long corridor to Hand's office, he tried settling for the satisfaction of knowing she would live on, happy, despite his approaching death at Primid hands, but all this line of reasoning bought him to was an enlightened state of pissed-the-hell-off. Immortality as fond memories in a loved one's heart was for suckers. The bitter ambrosia of inconsolable rage was his best bet for surviving today, he thought.

Cradling dear that blood-red coal of wrath in his soul, Bowser shouldered the major's locked door off its frame. The giant disembodied hand sprawled limp over its desk like a drunken spider, still wearing its whole-body glove, once white but now splotched gray and brown with filth. As anticipated, Base 6-4's C.O. had decided to greet its end riding the syrup. Hand developed the habit to chronic proportions months earlier, leaving a power vacancy Bowser had been happy to fill.

"Bastard," rumbled Bowser. "I always knew you were worthless." Bowser kicked down another door to the right and found Comms Officer R.O.B. #1984 sitting at the radio.

"Call Fort Hanenbow for reinforcements! Call for air support! Call for emergency evacuation!" he roared at the robot.

"Negative, Captain. All radio transmissions require an order, written or oral, from the commanding officer. Major Hand has ordered a stop on all outgoing transmissions," R.O.B. droned.

Bowser spun on the lethargic hand, got right up in its… palm, a gesture that felt ridiculous without a face in which to glower. He growled. "Sign me permission to radio for help, scumbag."

The major rolled over on its back and wriggled its fingers, resembling a dying spider now instead of an inebriated one. Bowser suppressed a shudder of revulsion. Major Hand began to sign: _Not going to do it. I don't want my commander angry at me. My career has suffered enough damage already._

"You'll like the damage I dish out even less if you don't give R.O.B. that order! Not to mention what the Primid will do to you if they capture you alive."

Major Hand pointed to its private latrine, then pointed at Bowser and made a flushing gesture. The Captain blinked. The office and all that resided within turned a rippling shade of red.

"You just bought yourself a whole slab of whup ass, sir."

The major made a feeble effort to crawl away. Bowser slammed down on its back, spiked carapace first. No longer fully in control of his actions, he grabbed Hand's middle finger and pulled it backwards with all his might. The major thrashed and heaved beneath him, but the syrup had drained most of its strength. The Captain hooted and hollered, and wished for a cowboy hat to wave in the air as he rode the bucking Hand. First came a slow creaking, then the sudden greenwood snap of bone breaking. The finger flopped loose at a sickening angle. A scarlet stain spread out through the fabric spread taut over the new joint.

Nothing inside Bowser told him to stop.

He snatched the stapler from the major's desk and went crazy stamping down into the squirming fabric until he ran out of staples. He belched flame and set the major's soggy glove on fire. And before the resulting brown smoke could choke him to death, Bowser stomped the flames out by slamming his spiked carapace onto the smoldering Hand over and over again. This created a catchy if irregular beat. _Snap. Crack. Pop. Crack, crack, pop._

The fire extinguished, Bowser reclined on the twitching wreckage of his superior officer, glazed eyes hooded in the afterglow. Oh, how he had needed that. Bowser lit his last stogie and let the rich smoke tickle his nose and flush out the mildew stink of scorched glove. The moment was complete.

Something big exploded outside, rattling the bunker hard. Dust sifted down from the ceiling. The teeth-rattling thud reminded him of the work yet unfinished. He produced the correct form from the major's desk, along with the official seal and ink pad.

"Here you go." He passed the stamped and signed order to R.O.B., who had only sat there and watched the whole show.

R.O.B. said, "This form has not been dated."

Bowser leaned in close and glowered into the robot's optical sensors until his breath misted the round plastic lenses. "Hey, little operating buddy, tell me something. You need _both_ those arms to operate that radio?"

R.O.B. paused. "Radioing HQ immediately to request assistance, sir."

* * *

Popo reached the north-east perimeter and found it intact, if only barely.

Charizard sprawled in a puddle of his own blood, bellowing mindless agony. The Pokemon dead lay everywhere. A few still whimpered or twitched, most were silent. No place existed below the sky where he could rest his gaze that did not reveal a new kind of wound. Lacerated scales that would not stop bleeding. Puckered holes of charred flesh where a Primid laser had found its mark. Smooth skin gnarled to burnt hamburger. Eyes dangling from smashed sockets. Each victim a mere brick stacked high in a shivering, oozing monument to trauma. Already, flies gathered in their black masses. If left alone, this courtyard would soon overflow with more new life than the latrines hosted. The rancid stench of the slaughterhouse filled his nasal cavities and could not be breathed out.

Only Pikachu and a few of his Pichu cousins remained. Bandannas soaked through, helmets dented, yellow fur encrusted with soot, they fought on, a maniacal gleam shining alongside the sun in the molten tar of their eyes. Again and again, they tipped over the top of the wall and sprayed assault rifle fire or dropped a grenade. Those who ran out of ammo killed the all-natural way, using biologically generated lightning streams.

"Pi pikachu chu pika," Pikachu chirped. Popo knew enough Pokemon to understand: _Bring forth more explosives. The corpses of the blasphemers pile high, my Brothers, and we must clear the wall lest our foes clamber up our defenses on a ramp built of their dead!_

Popo approached the nearest ladder, swallowing to rid his mouth of the bitter twang of mortal terror. Halfway up, a great clamor from the south stopped him short. The additional height allowed an unobstructed view of the East Quadrant. Tabuu's legions had breached the fortifications there. First through a hole in the outer wall, then over the abandoned gun nests, G&W and Primid alike scurried into the base. The pounding of thousands of scrambling feet almost drowned out the weapon fire.

The few remaining defenders rushed screaming into the black tempest, rifles and glands blazing. Game & Watches cut them down using pieces of their own bodies, often shaping these fragments into grisly parodies of everyday objects: food and frying pans; firemen's water buckets; trampolines; oil cans; even giant matches. The unwavering lines of Primid supported the G&Ws with every kind of firearm imaginable.

It was over in a matter of seconds. All the base would soon belong to the enemy. Only one lone figure remained to bar their way. He wore a distinctive red uniform Popo recognized even from this distance.

Pokemon Master Sergeant Red stood alone among the crumpled bodies of his charges, unflinching before the hail of enemy fire. The blue flare of opened pokeballs hid the man from Popo's view for a second, searing a phantom silhouette of flame that floated over his vision. Red hugged several Electrode Pokemons to his chest, the medicine capsule patina of their shells glinting in the sunlight. The Primid rushed in to take control. As a dark unified mass they encircled him, piled onto him, swallowed him.

Though it seemed all collapsed into the roar of general slaughter, the sergeant's scream still reached Popo. "You can't take me alive, mother fuckers! Palutena, I'm –"

The explosion burned too intense to watch with naked eyes, yet he could not look away. The searing white shock wave swept half the quadrant clear, the sheer force of it shaking Base 6-4 to its foundation. The tremor nearly threw Popo off his ladder.

While the sound was deafening, the icing on the shit cake came a moment later when one of the yellow-furred twits on the wall top, distracted by the conflagration, held onto a live flash bang grenade a second too long. Popo's head was turned, so he was spared another blinding flash, but his ears bore the full brunt of the assault. He screamed bloody agony but only heard it in his mind.

_Screw this._ "Yoshi. I'm coming buddy. Just hold on." Again, he heard the thoughts but not the spoken words and wondered if the ringing in his ears would ever stop. He jumped down from the ladder, hesitated, remembering the Pikachus nearby.

Pikachu gestured wildly from the top of the wall, its tiny mouth snapping open and closed. Before Popo could produce an excuse, a red laser beam divided the fresh smoke and ran the thunder rat through. Its insides flash boiled, the short fat body exploded into a spray of bone chips and meat and superheated body fluids. Gore drenched the Ice Climber.

Blinking furiously, he willed his legs into a sprint. Popo drew up the discipline of a glacier dweller and refused to succumb to the horror of the situation.

He ran back towards the center of the base faster than he had ever hurried for anything in his whole life – focused on rescuing the one friend he had left in all the world. Back to the foxhole.

Not much time remained before the enemy secured the base. He estimated several minutes at best. _No problem_. A lot could happen in a few minutes. The droning of his shocked ears lessened, and louder sounds began to find their way through the insulating noise-haze. The growing roar of the Sub-space Army's approach was one of these intrusions. The foxhole was just ahead, right around the corner.

Someone screamed. Popo hoped it was Wario.

Popo wheeled around the corner and charged the entrance, a slanted rectangle of pure darkness reclining under the jungle sun's glare. He heard the scream again and saw who unleashed it. Donkey and Diddy Kong ran from the foxhole on fire, arms flailing. A Primid with a flamethrower stalked up behind the Kongs and gave them another spray of flaming napalm.

The apes had been no friends of his. It no longer mattered. The M16 was level in Popo's hands, the stock braced against the shoulder before conscious thought ordered it so. The assault rifle fired, louder than the battle. Louder than everything. The Primid took the three bullets in its blank face and crumbled into a shifting pile of shadow particles. Popo growled. He wanted a corpse he could piss on.

There was nothing he could do for Donkey and Diddy. The apes blazed as they sagged to the cement in brown sizzling heaps, still clutching each other. Popo hurtled through the foxhole's entrance and found more Primid wielding flamethrowers. They had most of the storage room scorched clean. The syrup addicts lay curled on their filthy mats, oblivious, or perhaps welcoming the cleansing orange radiance. No one fought back. The Primid swept their flamethrower streams over the drugged soldiers with the same unconcerned efficiency of servants ridding a house of dust.

Popo spotted Yoshi. He screamed.

A twist of charred carbon was all that remained of his friend – marked by the saddle still strapped around what was left of the dino's back. Leather and scale crumbled to ash and scattered in the churning air.

Late. An eternity too late.

He wished then that he could feel the heat of the burning room. Or the sensation of being coated with blazing jelly, or Wario's knife carving deep into his neck. Anything, instead of what he felt at that moment.

The Primid locked onto this new infestation and swung their flamethrowers around for a final extermination sweep. Blue pilot lights hissed against a surging background of dirty red flame.

The jungle humidity froze over his skin, frosting every inch of him with innumerable ice crystals. Popo emptied the magazine into the two nearest him, ejected, slapped the next in before the empty clip clattered on the floor. He squeezed the trigger and nothing happened. For one horrible moment, time froze. A jam. He was charbroil. He stared, and the Primid stared back.

He tore his eyes away to check his rifle, found he had fumbled the safety catch on, clicked it off. Several streams of burning napalm unfurled his way. He rolled, coming up in a kneeling position. The rattle and bang of automatic fire reverberated in the foxhole's confines, doing his battered hearing no favors. Eyes and skin itched as if doused in acid. He was distantly aware that he was screaming again, half words and obscenities. Most of the Primid had dissolved. The last few charged him.

The M16 clicked, empty. No more magazines. Popo thanked the Captain silently for his insistence that all his men attach bayonets to their rifles. Popo met the Primid rush, stabbing and clubbing their heads and dumpy bodies. The flames came close enough that even his buried nerves could sense some heat.

All too quickly, there was nothing left to kill. He stumbled back out into the fetid jungle air, his parka tarred and clinging from the slurry of melted frost and ash. The furred hood was still on fire. He tore the garment off, the last reminder of home destroyed, save Nana's photo, which he removed and placed in a pants pocket. Down to his undershirt, he no longer cared if anyone made fun of his chubby figure, if there was anyone left to do so. He'd rip their throats out with his teeth.

Sand grated in his lungs and throat. Thanks to the close brush with napalm he had no more hair on the back of his head. The scalp beneath bleed on his fingers and was painful to touch.

He never saw Wario coming.

Something hard slammed into the side of his skull. Stars danced through his eyes; shadows clouded his consciousness. The world swam and flipped, unable to decide which way was up. Popo then noticed the ground against his back, hands idle at his sides. He knew those appendages should be doing something useful, like protecting their body, but they wouldn't move the right way. Agony spider-webbed across his brain. The salty taste of blood mixed with the metallic savor of fear in his mouth.

The generous deadness of shock fled. Above, Wario's hideous grinning face came into sharp focus. The drug pusher dropped his bloodied shovel, a few strands of hair stuck to its blade, and came closer. The stench of garlic and week old sweat made Popo gag.

Cold light glared off the knife, matching the glint in Wario's eyes. Gazing into those dark and deep sockets Popo recalled the fly-swarmed latrine pits. The knife point tickled up his cheek until the tip rested on his bottom right eyelid. Slowly, the blade tilted up into a prime angle for scooping work.

"Told you, you were gonna pay me back. Now that the shit's hit the tennis racket, you owe me and my boys double. I'm gonna take you apart from the kneecaps on up. The only thing I can't decide is if I want you able to watch me do it, or if I should cut your eyes out first and let you imagine what's coming next."

Popo had nothing to say. Wario was beyond words now. He could only lay there, mouth wide open. He regretted this in the next instant when the shovel axed down through the fat man's head, splitting the skull. Viscera geysered from the ruptured cranium and sloshed Popo with polluted blood. Popo spat out what he had not already swallowed in fright.

A scaly claw reached down and snared his shirt.

"On your feet soldier," said the Captain.


	3. He Thought of Nana

**Chapter Three/Three: He Thought of Nana**

(x_x)

* * *

The Captain had fetched the two remaining members of his unit.

Field Specialist 2nd Rank Olimar carried no weapon, needed no weapon. The vile host of half-sentient parasite plants squirmed over his hermetically sealed hazmat suit, ready to labor or kill on his command. From behind the smudged glass of his bubble helmet the specialist's face betrayed no reaction to the unfurling horror around them. Out of all the soldiers stationed at Base 6-4 he'd had the easiest time adapting to life in the steaming mildew-ridden wilderness.

_No, he could thrive here_, Popo thought. _He could hide in the forest and live like a king, lord over his own little empire of Pikmin. No one would ever find him_.

And then there was First Gunnery Sergeant Kirby. At the beginning of his current tour of duty Kirby traded Solid Snake a dozen cigarette cartons for the honor of swallowing him briefly, which allowed Kirby to copy his abilities. It worked. As a side effect, the alien's smooth marshmallowy pink body manifested a bandanna, facial hair, and a dashing mullet – physical markers that signaled readiness for combat and a capacity for rough, yet tender love. The swaggering pink blob toted an AK-47 in one flipper.

"Where's Red?" the Captain asked Popo.

"Red's dead."

Bowser nodded. "Figures. C'mon," he growled. "I got Hanenbow on the radio, but help's going to take its sweet time getting here. We'll hold out in the central bunker."

The earth bucked under their feet. Reality screamed.

Hunkered to the ground, Popo squinted back at the bunker. An event horizon ballooned from the base's center. The black manifold swallowed the command center and barracks in less than two seconds, a portion of their reality scooped out of space-time by a perfect circumference of causal disconnect, lost forever to another universe. A universe that harbored no love for Koopa and Ice Climber alike.

The horizon stopped expanding a dozen yards from where they stood, yet looking at it gave Popo the impression that the depthless blackness grew ever closer. Reaching out to enfold him.

"Our primary option for withdrawal has expired," Olimar murmured.

Hope, freshly respawned a moment earlier in Popo's heart, died whimpering for the tenth time that day. Bowser yanked him to his feet and cocked one paw for a backhand swing.

"I'm okay, I'm okay!" Popo squeaked.

The Captain put his hand down. "All right then. Stay frosty, fairies." He used his lips to shift a smoldering cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. "Looks like it'll have to be the hangar."

"What's at the hangar?" Olimar asked.

"Maybe a way out. Or maybe I just think it's a nice place to die. I'll take point." He slapped a stack of ammo magazines into Popo's palm. "Snow-baller, you cover our asses."

There was no choice. G&Ws and Primid roamed the base in small, fast-moving squads. They killed without hesitation, converting the battlefield into a sterile graveyard with ruthless efficiency. This was their hill now.

The quickest path to the airstrip lay in a narrow road running through the base's center, at the bottom of a cement trench. At road's end the hangar huddled over its litter of junked aircraft. They hurtled down this sunken cement lane, hoping to escape notice. But their bad luck held.

The alleys between buildings choked up with Primid jostling each other for space enough to shoot or lob grenades at Captain Bowser and his last chance squad. The trench walls provided the only cover – without it Primid weapon fire would've reduced them to carbon heaps. It was all they could do to run and keep the road clear before them and behind.

Popo and company dealt hot death wholesale. Subspace flesh disintegrated into purple dust. G&W pixels blew away before the might of the Captain's lead stream like dead leaves before a firefighter's water hose.

Kirby spun and twirled past anyone who got close, spraying them with automatic fire, cutter knife flashing out in hurricane of silver blades. Augmented by the legendary commando's skills, Kirby was an artist of death, a craftsman in pain; his superior technique contrasted the Captain's brute force approach with finesse and a dancer's unashamed grace. If a Primid could experience suffering, then Kirby's kills knew true agony before they evaporated into their base components.

Olimar was satisfied to play defense. His Pikmin formed themselves into bulletproof sheets or scouted around the four soldiers as they ran, absorbing what searing ordinance the enemy survived long enough to send their way. When he had some of the loathsome plants to spare, Olimar would toss them onto the enemies Bowser and Kirby missed.

Popo no longer had to think about the terrors surrounding them. He had his role now. Training moved his body for him. If anything flickered into the trench or emerged onto a roof at their flanks, he shot it, never once confirming first if it was friend or foe. The screaming core of primal terror buried deep inside his brain longed to throw all his ammo at the enemy in a frenzy of spraying and praying. It took all his discipline to fire one round at a time. He worked through three clips by the time they reached the airstrip.

On the long dirt runway the Primid waited for them. Reinforcements squirmed through holes blasted in the razor wire fence warding the strip. Rusted airplanes hoisted on cinder blocks exploded into plumes of black oily smoke as subspace bazookas decommissioned one scrapheap after another.

The Captain ran on his stumpy dinosaur legs, faster than Popo had previously thought possible. Safety was at last within sight. At the far end of the strip the hangar's entrance awaited them. Popo and the others did likewise, sprinting for the shelter without a backwards glance. The trench receded; they now crossed open ground.

Teeth gritted, Popo braced for the blistering shard of metal he feared would inevitably rocket from nowhere and rip away his life, even as he granted that same fate time and again to anything stupid enough to cross his line of fire. Ashes blown off burning machines swirled in the gusting tropical air. Gas fires shrouded the outside world behind crimson veils. Popo smiled for the first time in days to see the jungle vanish from sight.

The long run ended. They stood in the hot shadow of the squat hangar.

The guardhouse stood empty. Bowser tugged at the high doors, which were little more than huge sheets of metal suspended from chain pulleys, serving as the hangar's main and only entrance. Bowser pulled and grunted and yanked with all his might until his breathing became a panting hiss.

"Can't – _gasp – _budge it. Still locked from the other side. Have to find a way around."

"Perhaps I can be of assistance," said Olimar. His shawl of Pikmin dissolved in response to an unseen signal. The plants scattered and made their way into the hangar, either by worming through unseen holes, or climbing up to the roof and seeking openings there.

Plasma bursts stitched the doors with scorch marks. The main force had caught up with them. Popo dropped to the dirt and crawled for cover before Bowser began shouting. "Incoming! Get down! Get down!"

Olimar crouched into the nook where gatehouse met hangar wall and continued to communicate to the Pikmin via the mysterious and classified method by which he controlled the creatures. The Captain dived into the gatehouse itself and lobbed grenades out of the shattered window with his trusty M79 launcher. Kirby deflated himself into a pink pancake and trundled along, following Popo over to a nearby heavy machinegun abandoned behind a pile of sandbags. The Ice Climber took the occasional potshot while Kirby wrapped flipper around the machinegun's trigger and hosed down the oncoming horde. Grenade explosions stirred the ashes and beat the ground, their deep thuds soaking into Popo's ribs like a second heartbeat. Close to the bang and rattle of a working machinegun, the clangor was horrible. Popo bit his tongue and wished for earplugs, but there was nothing for it but to keep on fighting.

Primid and G&Ws died en masse. Between their dissolving ichors on the ground, and the riot of smoke above, the entire world darkened into a murky midnight. And yet, as the enemy perished by the lot, two replacements tromped out of the gloom for every one destroyed. Popo guessed that they had only minutes at best before Tabuu's minions overran their position.

A tiny hand clamped down on Popo's shoulder. The Ice Climber nearly surrendered all sphincteral control. Olimar ignored his yelp of terror.

"Entry has been secured. It is time to leave, Private. We –"

A fist of light burst from the specialist's bubble helmet. Popo didn't hear the shot or the machinegun or much of anything else. Just the gritty squeal of fracturing glass.

Olimar slumped to the ground, helmet blacked out by soot and blood. Kirby returned fire and cut in half the Primid who had landed the lucky shot. Popo rolled the corpse over, tried not to gaze into the smoking hole in the helmet. Tried to ignore the sloshing noises – like a half-filled fishbowl – coming out of the helmet as the neck lolled. The smell of boiled blood and other unnameable things summoned images into his mind he had thought gladly forgotten.

From far away Popo heard a high whining, growing louder and louder until it pushed out everything else in his brain.

An odd, itching tickle crawled up his arms and thighs. Popo returned to reality and looked down. The whining grew shrill.

Green and pink mottled Pikmin, bigger than any he had seen the specialist command while alive, crawled eyeless and shivering out of the ruined helmet. They attached onto his bare arms and squirmed up his pants legs, their little fingers probing with insect quickness. Insect hunger.

As one, they began their work. From dozens of spots all over his body they bored his flesh with teeth of frost. At last Popo knew the true meaning of the word.

_Cold._

He was cold for the first time in his life. And it was far worse than he had ever imagined.

The piercing whine swelled in pitch until it transformed into a scream.

"There he goes. Again with the crying," said the Captain, a universe away.

Everything went black. _Funny_, thought Popo. _I thought losing consciousness was supposed to be comfortable, somehow._ More than anything, he just wanted it to end.

Time and space resumed their usual programming when the iron hand of Bowser slapped him across the face. The pain recalled the image of Wario's skull, split and gushing around a shovel blade.

"Nap time's over! You ain't got time to bleed!" Bowser's breath blowing across his cheeks smelled worse than the drug pusher's had. The Captain hauled him to standing with one paw. Popo quickly probed his arms and legs and found numerous bleeding lacerations, all Pikmin-free. A bitter tingle of ice lingered where they'd eaten him away.

"Ngahh! Eugghh!" Popo gibbered, pointing to his new wounds.

"Stop your damn whining. Most of those things didn't have time to burrow into your skin before I cut them off. The rest were easy to dig out, and I'm _pretty_ sure I got them all. Now…"

They were inside the hangar. A few hanging lamps cast cones of yellow light down through the dusty gloom, demonstrating the generator still worked. No planes in the hanger had a working engine. All their wings had broken or been clipped and put away. This had been common knowledge in Base 6-4, for if anything flight-ready remained someone would have gone AWOL in it weeks ago. Plenty had tried.

The Captain stomped over to the only corner not occupied by a partially-disassembled aircraft and whooped out a cheer. "It's still here!" He began searching the dirty floor with the tips of his claws.

Footsteps on the roof. The closed doors shuddered as some great mass tested itself against the metal… and was repelled. The lamps swayed on their cords and the shadows danced. Then, the lights guttered out.

"Fan-fucking-tastic," Bowser hissed. He stomped over to Popo and pressed the M60 machinegun into his quaking hands. "Keep 'em busy."

Outside the walls, from every direction, sounded the cold clicking of a thousand Game & Watch joints. The Captain shuffled through the unbroken blackness back to the empty corner. The scraping of his searching claws resumed. Twin red lights drew up and stared at Popo. "Don't watch me, snowflake. Prepare to get some prime killing done while I work on our getaway."

Reluctantly, Popo turned away, checked the ammo drum and found the Captain had fully reloaded it. The hefty death factory was a comforting weight in his hands, but nothing could distract him from the horror of their situation. In a few minutes, maybe even seconds, they would all die here. _What's the Captain doing over there, digging our graves?_ He derailed that thought train before it could build steam. Nana would want him to have faith, to be strong. If she could see him now…

First one wall exploded, then the opposite burst inwards a second later. If not for the rows of junked airplanes the shrapnel from the blossoming metal would have shredded the three of them into cannibal jerky.

The sunlight poured in with blinding intensity, but not so blinding that he missed seeing the forms crowding the new entrances. Too startled to draw the breath necessary for screaming, Popo darted behind the nearest oil drum and opened fire on the enemy that rushed through the nearest jagged hole. Kirby covered the other breach, a pink blur of strobe muzzle flashes and spent casings.

Primid equipped for melee combat rushed in first. Unable to return fire, they died long before they reached their trapped targets.

The first wave down, the G&Ws swarmed in next. Amorphous black bodies resembling liquid crystal displays danced through the shadows, monochrome flesh glossy in the infernal heat. The abominations hefted wrenches and drills and manhole covers formed from their own essence.

Tabuu's forces embodied the axiom of victory through overwhelming numbers. Popo mowed down one row, and another eager line of troops stepped over the dissolving remains of their comrades. The flood of bodies crowded him farther back into the room's center, where the fuselage of a junked plane tipped over onto the floor provided the only cover. The air above the barrel of the machine gun rippled drunkenly with excess heat. A stray round clipped an oil drum set near his former position and the container exploded in a ball of oily fire, blasting over a dozen G&Ws into powder and setting many more ablaze.

Popo couldn't duck fast enough to escape a light misting of flaming goo. He rolled, smothering the small fire on his shoulders and back. _Damnit, why do they always put those things where people will be hurt?_

Dust scrapped between cement and boot soles. He looked up as several Primid faces peeked over the airplane. Screaming, he swung the machinegun around and blew away the whole row.

Yet one was faster than its ilk. The Primid lunged over the fuselage and bore Popo to the ground. It groped for his eyes, his mouth, the parts of him it detected as soft and weak. The lights of its eyes seemed to brighten, the only trace of expression in the featureless metal plating of its face.

Popo seized the sides of its smooth head and concentrated, even as the Primid hooked a finger under his tongue and began to pull up with all the dispassion of a robot operated crane. His whole skull began to burn with bright red pain. The sockets of his jawbone creaked.

The Primid paused as the first whorls of frost formed over its skin. It had finally noticed what he was doing to it. _So I'm not the only one in the universe who cannot feel cold. At least until it is too late. _Popo bit the thing's hard hand until he tasted blood, his own. He clamped his eyelids shut and began to twist. The thing took its digits from his mouth, and began to pry at his fingers. But the ice had glued him to the Primid. Its struggles grew frantic, fraught with the twitching urgency of something organic. Something alive.

For an instant, Popo felt a twinge of empathy for it. He had always wondered whether they were more tissue than robot. He gave a final, hard jerk. The Primid's head twisted free from its body. The lights of its eyes blinked out and stayed out.

Popo released the ice and threw the head away. Picked up his gun.

A platoon of G&Ws, seeing that their comrade had failed, assessed him a threat once more and rushed his position.

_There isn't enough room for this! _Retreating further, Popo found himself fighting back-to-back with Kirby.

Kirby tossed the spent AK47 aside and fell back on the limitless supply of grenades he pulled from goddess knew where. The G&Ws and Primid riflemen had a hard time shooting the small fast targets of Ice Climber and alien through the miasma of smoke, but their shots landed closer and closer.

In desperation Popo dropped to the ground and lay prone while he continued to fire. The M60's recoil nearly tore his shoulders out of their sockets. Popo risked a glance at the Captain to check the progress of whatever the hell he was doing. He half-expected to find nothing but daylight streaming through giant Koopa-shaped hole in the wall.

Yet Bowser was still there. Not much light reached the corner, but enough that he could see the Captain straining at what looked like a steel bar stuck into the floor. Part of the floor moved. A cement slab tilted up – Bowser was trying to lever open his secret hatch.

A laser ray struck the Captain on the shell. The Captain swore and sucked in his breath with a long hiss. He withdrew a pistol from his belt and shot the sneaky Primid between the eyes. Bowser noticed Popo watching him and waved the handgun angrily. "You're not doing your damn job, Private! Kill! Kill!"

Popo proceeded to do just that. Then the M60 ran dry. He slapped the last magazine into his M16. Back to one bullet at a time.

Kirby floated through shadow and smoke. He hopped and pirouetted, grenades abandoned, his cutter knife doing all the work. And what majestic, finely detailed work it was. The alien transformed into a dervish, slaying through an unbroken flow of movement and skill that could only be described as poetry rendered in suffering and black blood.

Behind Popo the whir of something like helicopter blades rose above the din of battle, a thrum building into a steady drone. The source of the racket moved higher behind him, but Popo dared not tear his eyes from the stream of enemy reinforcements for a quick look.

A flash of orange light. Once again Popo's ears went numb, save for the blaring drone of encroaching long-term hearing loss. Fragments of ceiling and a ton of dust rained down around him. The mess made Tabuu's forces hesitate mid-swarm. The softer glow of sun rays warmed the smog. And then the Captain roared, "Climb aboard boys! We're blowing this joint! Literally!"

The Captain hovered about twenty feet off the floor in what appeared to be a small helicopter assembled from the spare parts of a carnival ride. On the bottommost point of the round cup-shaped cockpit a single helicopter rotor whirled madly to keep the whole thing in flight. The copter was painted white and stenciled onto the side was a mischievous clown face with triangles for eyes.

Above the Captain, a giant hole gaped where the roof had been. A smoking rocket launcher of exotic manufacture perched on the Captain's scaly shoulder. A small rope ladder dangled over the copter's side, five feet short of the ground. Popo ran for it, firing his last few rounds blind to cover his flight. He jumped, and with adrenaline on his side, had no problem grabbing one of the ladder's lower rungs. The clown copter rose up through the ruined roof and cleared the hangar as Popo climbed.

"Hold on. We can't leave Kirby."

Even as he shouted this, Popo looked down to find an inflated Kirby soaring on a belly of less dense air, bobbing upwards towards the copter by flapping his flippers to gain altitude. Had the Ice Climber not stopped and glanced down, he would have missed the whole thing.

Something emerged from the column of smoke billowing out of the burning hangar, indefinite and wispy, as if born from the pollution itself. The only solid parts of its form were the heart blood red eyes burning within the murky pseudopod serving as its head.

Kirby drew close enough to the copter that he could lick it. The smoke ghost wrapped vague tendrils of smog around Kirby and began to drag him down. Popo cried out, drawing the attention of the Captain.

"Goddamn, it's a Floow," he growled. Having no more rockets, he hurled the rocket launcher at it. The metal tube passed right through the body cloud. Other Floows rose from the ruin below and joined their brother in the air. They tore at Kirby, who squeaked, leaking air as the things tugged him further away from the copter. Where their limbs wormed into his pink balloon-smooth body, not blood but warm yellow starlight poured out.

Bowser howled in rage, emptying his handgun's clip into the vague forms. Their poisonous eyes flared with renewed hate. Inhuman wailing pierced jungle sky and beating hearts alike. The Floows would not be put off and continued to feed.

Out of firearms, the Captain threw a small wooden box overboard. Popo read the warning painted on the crate's side in red letters as it tumbled past his head.

Amidst the writhing mass of smoky tentacles, Kirby saw the box dropping down on him and nodded. He seemed to recognize what Bowser intended. His mouth gaped wide and swallowed the well aimed crate.

Popo closed his eyes, unable to watch what had to happen next. Tears squeezed out between eyelids only to be ripped away by the high winds. The Floow's unholy moaning died instantly, crushed under a worse sound. The gust of hot air he should not have been able to feel with his deeply burrowed nerves warmed his skin, the way an accusation of guilt might. His abused ears dribbled blood.

He climbed and reached the cramped space of the cockpit. A halfhearted volley of plasma rounds pinged off the copter's polished side. Soon, they rose too high for Primid weapons to touch.

They flew southwest, towards Fort Hanenbow. The smoldering remains of Base 6-4 receded little by little into the distance. The jungle stretched on forever. High rising columns of black smoke framed the event horizon. A hateful dome of non-light blacker still than any smoke. No one spoke.

A pair of Arwings sped by, slicing the air with a screeching Popo heard only as a distant roar through the death cries of his inner ear's hair cells. His hearing was taking a long time to recover.

As a team the air fighters dived. The gray spheres of the nova bombs they deployed were far too small to see from such a distance, but their payload proved easy enough to spot. For a moment, half the world shone like a second sun, an event horizon of perfect white. When the light of the blast faded, only the subspace black hole remained, an abomination of physics no weapon could destroy, no technology could repair.

The Arwings circled in a graceful show of skill and blasted off for home.

Bowser sneered. "Wonderful. Now the air support arrives. They don't even check for survivors, just drop the hammer and sterilize. Less paperwork that way."

"I… I owe you my life," Popo said when he could no longer bear the ringing silence that followed.

The Captain grunted. "You also owe me forty bucks from a month back, and a new M60. I wanted to take that sucker home as a souvenir."

"If there's anything I can do to repay you, you need a favor. Just ask," said Popo.

He was aware that he should feel something for the loss of his comrades, but he couldn't make himself care. They were a dull ache down below his lungs somewhere. Just another minor hurt to compliment the Pikmin bites and roasted scalp. The recent and messy ends of Olimar, and Kirby, and even Yoshi were someone else's nightmare now. Ancient history that no longer mattered.

He lived. He would return home. And see Nana again.

The Captain stroked his chin. "Well, there is one thing you could do that'd really take the edge off right now."

Brimming with goodwill, Popo replied, "Yes?"

"First, put this on." The Captain reached into one of his belt pockets, pulled out the dingy blond wig, and set it on the Ice Climber's head. Greasy strands of used hair trailed down over his eyes. It reeked of mold.

Bowser took a moment to adjust the wig until it was set just so, then he leaned back and spread his legs wide. Popo saw rather than heard the Captain's shudder of pleasure.

"Peach," said the Captain. "The air feels good up here. Come a little closer, why don't ya?"

"Uhh…" Popo's mind reeled. This wasn't at all what he'd had in mind. Friends didn't return favors like this. Any way but this.

"Better snuggle close before you catch a chill, my darling Peach." One of the Captain's huge scaly hands wrapped around the back of his head. Gently, but firmly, he drew Popo's face closer to the shadows of his nether regions.

"There, there. Don't be shy, sweetness. The king of awesome's been fighting real hard for you and just needs to let off a little tension. Squeeze off a few rounds, _you catch my drift_?" Bowser waggled his eyebrows and pulled the Ice Climber in the rest of the way.

Popo scrunched his eyes closed and opened his mouth. He thought of Nana.

_**The End**_


End file.
